Welcome to this month’s writing roundup, where I revisit pieces I published during the past month. Salon, “Atticus Finch was never a hero: ‘This book taught white people how to talk about race, and it did so badly,’” by Scott Timberg, 16 July 2015....

Five years ago or so, I wrote and published a scholarly piece on To Kill a Mockingbird. I noted Atticus Finch’s “failure of empathy,” and said that white readers could not—would not—empathize with black characters in the book because of a “fear...

Alexander: My great crime was imagining that there was a path to racial justice that didn’t include those we view as guilty. #newjimcrow — Katie Guest Pryal (@krgpryal) October 1, 2013 With my colleague Tamar Birckhead, I went to see Michelle Alexander, author...